AACR 2018: Results of the Pan-Gynecologic Molecular Study
Posted: Friday, April 20, 2018
A comprehensive analysis of data from 2,579 tumors representing invasive breast carcinoma and four other gynecologic cancers has revealed “intriguing molecular relationships” and identified previously unknown cancer subtypes. The Pan-Gynecologic (Pan-Gyn) molecular study, led by Rehan Akbani, PhD, of The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, evaluated the tumor data from The Cancer Genome Atlas as part of the Pan-Cancer Atlas, a series of studies that aim to map key genomic changes in a variety of cancer types. The study findings were presented at the 2018 American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Annual Meeting in Chicago (Abstract 3303/8).
“This study presents a broad-based, curated atlas of gynecologic and breast cancer molecular features that we believe will be useful as a starting point for researchers in the field for many years to come,” said Dr. Akbani in an MD Anderson press release. “A number of the observations have possible prognostic and/or therapeutic relevance.”
By focusing on 16 key molecular features across the Pan-Gyn cancers, the researchers identified 5 novel cross-tumor and prognostic subtypes with potential clinical implications. They also developed a decision tree to classify patients into the five subtypes based on six clinically assessable molecular features.
Dr. Akbani and colleagues uncovered the presence of functionally significant estrogen receptor–regulated long noncoding RNAs (lncRNAs) and interaction networks between genes and lncRNAs. In addition, some subsets of tumor samples revealed high levels of leukocytes, which could be a potential future target for immunotherapy.
